- Failure to finish off Britain at Dunkirk
Very untrue, while this was a military failure it hardly did cost the germans the war and they secured massive british equipment and supplies, too. Actually there are many reasions why Hitler did not finish the Britains off in Dunkirk.
- German tank blitzkrieg was faster than the infantery and he wanted to dispatch the britains in full force with minimal losses.
- Hitler was negoating for peace to close the westfront with GB and thus took it easy on them
- Hitler had quite some loyal followers in GB, he even had an affair with british girl and nazi follower
Unity Mitford. Hence, he might be a bit influenced anyways, whenever it comes to GB.
- More importantly British pro nazi King Edward VIII had abdicated the british throne few years before the war, there was a speculation that Edward VIII would have returned as a king to GB. Again no reasion to hurt GB and waste resources on them.
- Hitlers ideology, his holocaust and war was directed against the jews and people in the
east it can't be stressed enough so i repeat it once again.
EAST. Also called:
Lebensraum im Osten. The whole Agenda of Hitlers war was focused on this 1st goal. The 2nd goal was the holocaust. GB and US only played minor roles in Hitlers plan. Actually the only real west target was France, cause they needed a revenge victory for those 1st ww events the Armistice of Compiègne.France declared war, too. All the Wehrmacht forces were located in the east, Poland. I bet Hitler and his Panzergenerals would have prefered to continue marching further deep into the east, if they could, but not with a combined british/french army on their throat in the west.
- another reasion to spare dunkirk GB forces, was, that hitler didn't want his generals to become too popular in the victories without him in charge. So the strict Dunkirk order to not finish the GB off, was a punishment for them.
- Failure to have any real plan to invade Britain and clean up the west before attacking Russia thus ensuring a 2 front war.
This is very true actually. This was the true beginning of the end of Hitler's war. While it was mentioned GB had hardly the resources to engange the Wehrmacht on the ground it had the power to airbomb and sabotage(commandos) the most important supply lines and german factories in the western part of the 3rd reich, skandinavia and greece.
Actually i will go so far and say its not GB that was the problem for Nazi Germany, it was Churchill, and Churchill alone. Without him GB would have surrendered and U.S. would have probably never went to war with the germans. U.S. citizens weren't pro war with europe and had their right wings etablished too weren't pro Sovjets and were rather pro nazi.
Like everywhere on the world, hitler was a very popular and charismatic dictator before the war started during the 30ies. Dictatorship was a modern way to rule a country in this time period, it wasn't quite the stigmata back then. The holocaust and detailed war crimes become well known a bit later to everyone at this time.
The other main problem was Hitler indeed did understimate the Churchill-threat and gave it wrongly a low priority. Maybe he had bad advisors, too. That guy had a lot of political influence that was way more dangerous than just GB's military threat at that time.
- Simply under-estimating the Russians at Stalingrad and Kursk.
Understemating Stalin alltogether would be the correct answer. Stalingrad and Kursks are just battlefields, they weren't really the source of the reasion why german was defeated. Germany was defeated, cause Stalin was able to rally his country and got tons of supplies from the allies, most importantly thousands of U.S.trucks to transport his stuff. Those red army soldiers were previously ill equipped and lost allmost all battles prior to moscow and stalingrad. But the holocaust and some other cruel things(scorched earth later on) made the russian population upset and fight for stalin and the motherland propaganda. Previously he was a very unpopular Dictator who was responsible for 10 million deaths in his own country - they starved to death cause of his radical plans of industrialization - the super power status did came with a price. However blindfolded Hitler destroyed his easy victory flow by mass murdering and plundering russian people. They had quite some jews there too in the east.
As for Stalingrad, german military did not see right through operation uranus, surrounding the wehrmacht in stalingrad.
Göring also lied to hitler he could support the stalingrad troops with his airforce.
So all he did was understimating Stalin, like he understimated Churchill. However, Stalin was unpopular in his country and cause millions of deaths by starving. In additoin the red army was very weak and lost a war against a small country - Finnland.
From the right point of view, before the invasion of the USSR, its easy to underestimating Stalin and the red army. Or extra hard russian early winter.
We weren't fortune tellers, either and just know the outcomes now, the odds were in favor of germany, but chance, diplomacy and some odd tactical decisions took away that opportunity. Like operation seelöwe wasn't executed to full victory over GB before declaring war on USSR. Like not bombing the RAF to death but do the capitol terror bombin on london.
Besides, the holocaust could have cost the germans the war too, russian popultion thought Hitler is their Savior first, and then he killed them and plundered the lands. That gave Stalin easily enough manpower to his exhausted red army. The red army was almost completely destroyed when the wehrmacht reached moscow. It recovered all too well.
- Some have even suggested that the whole 1942 offensive was misguided and they should have gone straight to Moscow (This assumes Russia would have surrendered with the fall of Moscow).
Could have worked, but only if the germans would have catched Stalin in Moscow, and actually Stalin was there and stayed even there at the battle of Moscow....chances are good they would capture him if they would have surrounded the city with ground forces while having air supremacy and against the sovjets they had their air supremacy as the red army was focusing more on heavy ground forces tanks and artillery.
Moscow wasn't nearly as important as Stalin, though. No matter how important it did become after Napoleons invasion. Siberia, another familiar home of Stalin, for example, is very big and a harsh land. Sovjets won't surrender before their dictator and military is wiped out completely. Capitols are important, but can be recaptured, too. See Paris. Just France didn't quite have the room and resources as them Sovjets had and it didn't have a Dictatorship that will pay any price to win.
- They were simply out numbered, out gunned and out classed once both Russia and the USA were at full war footing.
It wasn't that simple at all. It wasn't a war in the gulf of a superpower against a tiny nation with a madman, this was a world war - and there everything is possible! The whole war against nazi germany was the
way to get to this diplomatic, military and economic unique position to hurt and crush germany. It was especially Churchills leading effort to keep the resistence against Germany up early on and get US into supporting his cause.
Just a few different outcomes and Nazi germany would be at sovjets place instead, as a new and more dangerous superpower. Would Hitler hit that red shiny button? You guess. Just give those nazi rocket scientiest more resources and time...yeah. Wonder how long it would take to have the first ICBM's. You know they worked for the U.S. after the war and personal like Werner von Braun were quite of importance, U.S. reached during the late 60ies the moon with his efforts.
- Countless others of which my personal favourite is that the Italians cost them the war as everywhere the Italians fought the Germans met with disaster.
Well, thats true. Too true. The fine Wehrmacht soldiers and elite SS troops saved Italians several times. Even the doomed italien Dictator Mussolini was freed of his jail by a german special operation. Italy is a beautiful country but the military is useless and their government. My grandfather fought in ww1 on austria side against Italy - that betrayed my country and gained nothing by it. So the italians were hated alot at this time. After those events he married an italian girl though.
However, recently I have been reading a few books that indicate that the greatest failure was that of supply, failure to place the economy on a full war footing until it was too late, not planning for the gauge change between German and Russian rail lines, the use of countless variants of weapons etc.
Sure easily Japan and Germany both lost the economic war.
But the greatest failure wasn't keeping up the supply and economy that could have changed easily depending on the war outcomes, like, if ther wouldn't be a west front when the east front opened up. GB ruined a lot of german supplies with their commandos and bombers, kinda backstabbing while the main german force was far away in the east.
I say the main reasion was probably the lack of diplomacy, the wrong ideology of faschism, racist and holocaust murder - look the russians people were happy when hitler declared war on them they thought he was a savior to stalin.......but he was cruel.
Also, he totally underestimated Churchill and Stalin.
